Cancer News

Updated Method May Predict Breast Cancer Recurrence

-- Rick Ansorge

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6 (HealthDay News) -- IBTR! version 2.0 -- a Web-based nomogram to predict ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence after breast-conserving therapy -- may be accurate in most patients with a low-to-moderate risk but overestimates risk in some higher-risk patients, according to a study published online Jan. 4 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Mona Sanghani, M.D., of Tufts Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues studied 7,811 patients who were evaluated with the original 1.0 nomogram, and tested the modified nomogram in 664 patients who were followed for a median of 9.3 years.

Although IBTR! version 2.0 predicted an overall 10-year risk of 4 percent, the researchers found that the observed estimate was 2.8 percent. They also found that predicted and observed risk estimates were 2.2 versus 1.3 percent for patients with a predicted risk of less than 3 percent; 3.8 versus 3.5 percent for patients with a predicted risk of 3 to 5 percent; 6.7 versus 3.2 percent for patients with a predicted risk of 5 to 10 percent; and 12.5 versus 8.7 percent for patients with a predicted risk of greater than 10 percent.

"If maintained and updated on a regular basis, such a predictive model for local recurrence will be valuable to help individual patients understand the low risk of local recurrence in contemporary practice after breast conservation treatment with radiation and to provide a tool for physicians to facilitate joint decision making with patients through discussion, education, and individualized counseling," states the author of an accompanying editorial.